How do we talk about issues that matter
How do we talk about issues that matter?
From my experience teachers bring up issues that may be hard to talk about through writing prompts and videos. The most recent one I can think of was in my English class last semester the teacher would have us write open-ended responses to a specific prompt and have us discuss our response with the rest of the class once we were done. I really liked that she did this because it let us form our own opinions surrounding a topic with our own previous knowledge before being influenced by what others had to say. More importantly, by hearing the opinions by other people in our classroom we were able to hear different points that we may not have thought about it earlier.
In the future I believe teachers should encourage classroom discussion when discussing controversial topics. This is also seen in the nineteen higher level practices in number four “leading in class discussions”. By doing this the students get an opportunity to learn how to communicate their opinions in a respectful and inclusive way, while also learning to be open minded towards others.
Additionally, I believe teachers should remind students before having open ended discussion about how to communicate effectively among each other. I believe teachers can do this by showing YouTube videos or Ted talks where they show people having a respectful discussion in which two or more people have opposing viewpoints and have the students comment what specifically they found made the people in the video have effective communication. After commenting what made the discussion respectful and effective, it would give the students a starting point on how to have these conversations with their peers.
Another idea I had was having your students make a list of examples of respectful and non respectful communication. So that they understand the difference on what is appropriate when having discussions. This is seen in number eight of establishing high-leverage practices “establishing norms and routines for classroom discourse..etc”.
Hi! I had an english class that did something similar to what you did. We would have a topic and would write what we thought about the specific topic and then put them in a bin and our teacher would read them. She didn't say who wrote what and I think that was a great way to help students say what they actually wanted to say. I also liked the paragraph you had at the end about communicating respectfully because there are going to be controversial topics that pop up later in life and if you can't talk to people respectfully then it is going to cause problems.
ReplyDeleteHello Ariadna, I love your idea and your post this week. I love the idea of expressing ideas and discussion through a drawing or even an activity to encourage discussion of why. Respect in important and us a future educator have a lot of impact on our future students. Incorporating a respect lesson into these kids learning will help grow these students to be kind respectful adults. Because we spend so much time with our student a day these lessons of respect could also help with our classroom management. I remember doing "leading in group discussion". At the time I hated it, but I think it made me more confident in my thoughts and make me open minded to hear other people's opinion. I love this idea of seeing it visually and this would be a great poster to have up year around to remind students of how they should treat each other with kindness and respect.
ReplyDeleteHi Ariadna! I like how you included your own experience with bringing up sensitive matters in the classroom. I have not had a professor or teacher provide a question and allow us to answer using our opinions. I really like what this teacher did, and it allows the students to open up about their opinions and form relationships with their peers. By listening to other students’ opinions, one’s mind can change, or their opinion can grow into something stronger. I think now, students have started to argue with each other more when sharing their opinions. I think as teachers we can allow these sensitive topics as a way for students to learn how to respect other people’s opinions and grow their knowledge on certain topics. I think your point about growing the students’ knowledge on effective communication is really important. By doing this, students can begin to understand how to have effective conversations.
ReplyDeleteHello Adriana! I loved your article this week and how you opened up and shared with us a personal experience that you encountered in school. It really showed that this happens everywhere and that things are changing and people are more open to having these conversations now. I think being able to discuss these things within a classroom and share is important to growth not only as a person but as a student as well. I think knowing how to start and be respectful during these conversations as you stated is a good idea and can lead to the conversation flowing better. These are not easy topics or things that people can truly wrap their heads around but listening and being open to these things is the first step.
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